Collateral Damage
Collateral Damage is the twenty-third episode in season seven of . Synopsis Horatio and the team work to figure out why a seemingly normal family was targeted in a brutal grenade attack in a restaurant. As they dig through the family's and restaurant employees' backgrounds, they find more to the story than meets the eye. Meanwhile, Ryan catches Tara doing something illegal. Plot A grenade lands in Tisano's Restaurant at the foot of Warren Emerson, who is enjoying a celebratory birthday dinner with his family and assistant, Raquel Dominguez. The grenade explodes, leaving Warren and Raquel dead and Warren's wife Deborah and son Steve injured. When the team arrives, Horatio speaks to Jason Molina, the owner, who tells Horatio that Warren was a big time lobbyist. He points Horatio in the direction of Tonya Rush, the waitress who was working the table. Horatio is surprised to find Tonya reluctant to talk, and is able to draw out of her that her children were taken by child services. Horatio decides to get to the bottom of what happened, paying a visit to DCFS and checking on Tonya's children, Maggie and Aidan. He learns that a man filed a parental negligence complaint against Tonya. The woman claimed a nanny named Maria Lopez was watching her children, but when DCFS showed up the kids were alone--and they were unable to locate a Maria Lopez who worked for Tonya. Ryan drops by the morgue to check on Warren's autopsy, but when he and Dr. Price move the man's body, a second grenade falls out of his pant leg...and detonates! Ryan jumps to protect Kyle, while Tara scrambles to pick up her spilled pills in the wake of the explosion. Though none of them are hurt, Ryan is concerned about Tara's fixation on her medication. She claims they're a victim's property, but he sees through her excuse and asks if she's hooked. She denies it, but Ryan tells her she needs to kick her addiction. Horatio speaks with Steve and Deborah Emerson and the two tell the CSI that Warren lobbied against big industry. Horatio asks about Steve making the reservation for the table by the window, but the young man insists he had nothing to do with his father's death. Deborah recalls seeing a flash of yellow outside the window just before the grenade went off, so Horatio sends Delko back to the restaurant to look to see if he can find evidence of a yellow car. In the lab, Ryan and Natalia find a flash from a personal camera in the remnants of the homemade bomb while Horatio asks Tonya Rush about Maria Lopez. Tonya tells him she met the woman at law school. Suspecting Maria is an alias, Horatio asks Tonya for the cancelled checks she used to pay Maria. Back at the restaurant, Delko recovers yellow paint trace and gets a partial license plate number from an impression on the valet stand, which the car struck when it was speeding away. Tripp goes to the owner's house and the man, Ken Jarvik, fires at him and flees! Tripp catches up with him and cuffs him. Calleigh and Delko search the man's house and find silver laminate and IDs with the Dade Mutual logo inside, leading them to suspect Jarvik is making fake credit cards. Tripp leans on Jarvik, who admits to forging credit cards but denies any involvement in the bombing. When pressed, he gives up the location where the credit card operation is based. When Horatio and Delko go to the warehouse Jarvik identifies, they are surprised to find Steve Emerson there. Steve tells the CSIs he's been running the scam for 18 months, and that Jason Molina, the owner of Tisano's, sold him credit card numbers. Horatio realizes it was Steve, not Warren or Raquel, who was the target of the grenade, and Steve is shocked and horrified to realize his actions led to his father's death. Steve tells Horatio that someone sent him a photo of himself and Ken with Jason a few weeks ago, and points the CSI to his laptop to see the photo. After arresting Jason Molina, Horatio asks Tonya Rush if she had any idea about the scam, but she swears she wasn't a part of it. She gives Horatio the cancelled checks she paid Maria Lopez. Horatio goes to the store where the checks were cashed and forces the owner to give him the transaction receipts. He sees the name Yvette Cervantes on them and calls the woman to set up an appointment to talk about daycare. In the lab, Calleigh and Dave Benton look at the photo on Steve Emerson's laptop and Dave is able to identify the kind of camera it was taken with. Calleigh recognizes it as the same type used to take pictures of the CSI team, leading her to Cameron West (last seen in "Target Specific"). Delko and Ryan have him brought in and confront him: one of the stolen credit card numbers was from a corporate account for a Russian business. Ryan tells him he killed two innocent people. Cameron refuses to fess up, knowing that the CSIs don't have enough to hold him. Despite their warning that the Russians will kill him when they realize the real target is still alive, he leaves--and their predictions prove accurate. Horatio meets with Yvette, who tells him that Jason Molina forced her into taking the job to watch over Tonya's children--and then abandon them. He convinces her to come forward. Jason tells Horatio that Tonya got wise to the credit card scam, so he set her up with the babysitter so that she would lose her children--and be too distracted to turn him in. Horatio reunites a grateful Tonya with her two children. Cast Main Cast *David Caruso as Horatio Caine *Emily Procter as Calleigh Duquesne *Adam Rodríguez as Eric Delko *Jonathan Togo as Ryan Wolfe *Rex Linn as Frank Tripp *Eva LaRue as Natalia Boa Vista *Megalyn Echikunwoke as Tara Price Guest Cast * Evan Ellingson as Kyle Harmon * Wes Ramsey as Dave Benton * Rob Kerkovich as Cameron West * Edward Edwards as Warren Emerson * Marguerite MacIntyre as Deborah Emerson * Drew Tyler Bell as Steve Emerson * Sprague Grayden as Tonya Rush * Nikki Hahn as Maggie Rush * Kamar de los Reyes as Jason Molina * Billoah Greene as Charles Porter * Trevor Peterson as Ken Jarvik * Gizza Elizondo as Yvette Cervantes * Jasmine Dustin as Raquel Dominguez * Frank Gallegos as Cashier * Puja Mohindra as Female EMT * Desiree Brajevich as Restaurant Victim See Also Category:CSI: Miami Episodes